Term coined in the 1960s by Greek city planner Constantinos Doxiadis to mean a continent-spanning city. Doxiadis predicted that, given contemporary trends in urban development, a European eperopolis which would grow out of the “Blue Banana”, a corridor of urbanisation that stretches from northern England to Milan. (He later became more ambitious and invented the word “ecumenopolis” to mean a world-spanning city.)